Wireless technology can be used to connect computers to the Internet via the airwaves, but also to connect your PDA with your computer at home, or even your mobile phone. Wireless technology offers new flexibility, but also raises issues for security and the government. This Topic in Depth reviews these issues and provides some background on wireless technology. The first website from Wireless Networking Mini-Tutorial (WKMN) ) identifies the major types of wireless used today as Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Mobile Wireless, and Personal Area Networks. The WiFi Alliance, which certifies interoperability of IEEE 802.11 products in order "to promote them as the global, wireless LAN standard across all market segments" also gives an overview of WiFi, or Wireless Fidelity, on this second website Wi-Fi Alliance. The IEEE 802.11 is the common standard used for LANs and is described more in this white paper from 3Com . The Bluetooth infrastructure, more common in Personal Area Networks, is described on this website Information on BlueTooth. The current hot issue in the Wi-Fi world is security, which is discussed in this article from e-Week. Legal issues are also being raised, especially since the boundaries for wireless are unclear, which means people can survey for wireless networks without paying for access. This process is described in an article from the O'Reilly Network website. Finally, this last website Bitpipe: Wireless LAN White Papers offers a number of white papers on wireless LAN.

This annual report released by the World Bank draws on surveys of over 30,000 firms in 53 developing countries, along with various country case studies sponsored by the World Bank. Released in September 2007, the 288-page report highlights opportunities to improve its investment climates by expanding the opportunities and incentives for firms of all types. Throughout its rather broad scope, the report suggests that governments remove barriers to competition, along with placing a premium on delivering the basic foundations for increased investment, such as creating a stable infrastructure and securing property rights. The report also details what the international community can do to assist in this long-term process and also provides some helpful indicators of world development, along with technical and methodological notes. It is worth noting that the report is available in a number of different languages.

The Second International Conference on Pervasive Computing was held in April 2007 in Vienna, Austria. This website highlights a Workshop on Memory and Sharing Experiences from Pervasive 2007. The purpose of this workshop was "to exchange research results and to foster ideas in the emerging field of ubiquitous experience recording technologies with the goal of effective experience sharing." The infrastructure is used to "record experiences of people working and playing in the real world" and has applications in multimedia memory aids, context recognition, life-pattern modeling, and the storytelling of life. The full program, proceedings and a summary discussion are posted on this website. Topics covered at the workshop included methods and devices, storage and databases, experience and interaction corpora, applications, privacy, and other issues. The website also links to information on a special issue of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Journal, as well as other related online resources and projects.

Electrical design engineer Lazar Rozenblat was once told in college that "an engineer does not have to remember everything, but should know where to find the information he/she needs." Following that advice, Rozenblat has put together this "one-stop informational resource on Power Electronics /SMPS design." The website provides links to engineering reference information and design resources and is "being constantly updated." The About section describes his selection process and invites others to submit their websites to the page. The links are organized by topic areas, such as SMPS design, standards, tools, and magnetics, and links are then listed under sub-topics within those areas. The EE Reference section provides some links to tutorials, general engineering reference, and career resources.

The Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre (EdVEC) "is committed to pursue and publish research of the highest international standard." Its work focuses on the capture, modelling and representation of 3D real-world objects and domains. The organization also offers virtual environments to support teaching and research within the University and collaborate with industry to promote technology transfer. The website seems to be a work in progress, but a number of publications are already posted. Also several of the center's animation and commercial projects are described in the Projects section, along with a few demonstrations of these and other projects. The Services section describes some of what the organization offers in terms of 3D-data capture, scanning, and analysis services.

The Institute for Security Technology Studies (ISTS) at Dartmouth College "is dedicated to pursuing research that addresses critical national needs for security technology and policy in cyber and emergency response environments." Its interdisciplinary research draws from science, engineering, social science and policy perspectives to investigate critical security problems using existing technology and ideas, as well as by developing new technologies. A wealth of publications including journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports are available to download from the Library section. Also posted are descriptions and links to websites for the Institutes projects within the Cyber Security & Trust Research Center (CSTR Center), the Emergency Readiness & Response Research Center (ER3 Center), Cyber Security Exercise Development Center (CSED Center), and other Special Projects. Visitors interested in getting an overview of the organization's work can read the featured publications or check out news items, such as a project to develop "a mathematical technique to tell the difference between a 'real' image and one that's been fiddled with."

This is the website for a Stanford PhD candidate, Timothy Wolfe Bretl, who is "currently working on the design of motion strategies for autonomous mobile robots." His work is providing insights into fundamental design principles, which he hopes can be used "to create useful autonomous systems that can perform difficult, dangerous, or tedious tasks." One area of his work involves Autonomous Rock-Climbing Robots, which could one day be used for "search-and-rescue in mountainous terrain or broken urban environments." Also highlighted here is his work on Dynamic Movement and Cooperative Mobile Robotics. Photos, diagrams and 3D models help to display and explain these research projects. More information can be found on his Publications page, where a few articles and reports are available to download.

The Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement, or SMILE program, is a project of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Center and is funded by a grant from the Lucent Technologies Foundation. The program is "designed to enhance the elementary and high school learning of Science and Mathematics through the use of the phenomenological approach." On this website, the project posts the lesson plans developed by teacher participants at its summer sessions held between 1986 and 1997. The lessons, available free online, are also available in print or CD for purchase and include a list of the materials needed, suggested activities and expected outcomes. The Mathematics section includes lessons on Geometry and Measurement, Patterns and Logic, Probability and Statistics, Recreational and Creative Math, Practical and Applied Math, Graphs and Visuals, Algebra and Trigonometry, and Arithmetic. Submissions from participants after 1997 are less detailed, offering a brief single concept lesson or idea. More recent additions are posted in the Contributed Lessons section, which welcomes guest contributions from educators, parents and others interested in contributing concept lessons which use the phenomenological approach to learning. Visitors may also find some helpful resources in the Web-based resources section. Also posted are class notes from courses offered through the SMILE teacher training program.

This article describes the Picasso-effect software that is part of a suite of imaging technologies developed by computer scientists at the University of Bath. The scientists have found a way to turn photo albums, videos and movies into drawings, paintings, and cartoons. The researchers were able to "teach the computer how to pick out the elements of photographs that, until now, only humans have been able to recognise as important." Basically, the computer identifies elements, such as a nose, eye or mouth, and proceeds to cut the images into chunks. The chunks are then statistically shuffled and then randomly-selected chunks are distorted to create a 'cubist' composition. The author ends the article with a discussion of some of the applications for this "automated art" in animation.

TechWeb Network is an online resource for IT professionals providing "contextual access to the resources of CMP's network of industry-leading technology publications." The site offers this handy encyclopedia of technology terms where visitors can search a database of over 20,000 IT terms. Results are given as short definitions with links to related terms, along with links to definitions of other terms that are similar to the original term requested. For fun, visitors will also find a featured "random definition" and can browse the top 10 requested definitions.

WorldSpace is part of Noah Samara's vision "to 'create a new form of electronic media' using satellites to broadcast directly to people across the globe." WorldSpace claims to be the first to bring Satellite Radio to the world, among other "firsts." This section of the website describes how satellite radio works. A map shows the coverage area for their two satellites. The rest of the website describes their product. The Listen Now section provides some sample mp3 files to give you a taste of their programming and sound quality.

The Electronic notebook, though different in appearance from a paper notebook, offers all the basic functions of a paper notebook. "An electronic R&D Notebook is the electronic equivalent of a paper research notebook. Instead of recording information on paper, the sketches, text, equations, images, graphs, signatures, and other data are recorded on electronic notebook pages, which can be read and navigated just like in a paper notebook". The required information can be input using a computer or directly from scientific instruments. In addition, electronic notebooks facilitates easier input of scientific data, enables the researchers to share the records of ideas, data, events and research programs across the different geographic locations. Scientific Annotation Middleware (SAM) group under the auspices of Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) initiative, US Department of Energy, has released this electronic notebook. This release includes functionality primarily from the Metadata Management and Notebook Services layers of SAM. Quoting from the website, "SAM can be used as a middleware solution for providing HTTP and webDAV access to content in file systems and databases with capabilities for metadata generation and data translation; Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) 5.1 compatible notebook server, or both. SAM 2.0 can be configured to use a wide range of relational databases and file systems. It can be configured to support username/password or Grid-based authentication".

The website has a comprehensive collection of RF & microwave resources for wireless communication engineers. It includes tutorials, theory, design aids, circuit diagrams, products, and more. The topics covered are filters, amplifiers, antennas, oscillators, modulation, digital communications theory, information theory and much more.

The Agricultural Gateway to India is a website designed to satisfy the information needs for agriculture in India. The target users include scientists, researchers, extension personnel, students, farmers, policy-makers, media, consumer groups, and agribusiness professionals.

Site contents include: What's New; Animal Sci; Audio Files; Crop Sciences; Economics; Engineering; Extension; Fisheries; Gender Issues; General Ag; Home Science; Horticulture; Human Res; InfoTech; Issues; Libraries; Maps; Natural Res; Organisations; Programmes; Publications; Sustainable Ag; Weather; Search; Tools; The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR); DAC; FAO; CGIAR, other portals to Indian Agriculture.

The Javvin Company offers this online Network Protocol Suite Directory and Index. A network protocol is made up of "a formal set of rules, conventions and data structure that governs how computers exchange information over a network." This compiled online database is handy given that these protocols are defined by various organizations and technology vendors. The database organizes the protocols according to their key functions or their origin/sponsors, but the listing can be viewed alphanumerically by protocol name. The website also provides information on Javvin's products. Visitors can get a free a protocol network map poster by contributing to the protocol dictionary.

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology's (CRN) Wise-Nano project is "a collaborative website to study the facts and implications of advanced nanotechnology." The website is designed for researchers and intended to encourage collaboration worldwide and "to build an understanding of the technologies, their effects, and what to do about them." From this website, visitors can ask and answer questions, join or start a project, create, review, edit, or expand on articles, contribute to discussions, or find collaborators for research. The website offers an innovative approach to promote dialogue on hot topics in nanotechnology. Basically, someone poses a question and proposes a project to investigate, people gather to work on the project, which leads to articles. Although articles can also be added separately from any project, the point is that "any user can work to improve any article." For example, the main page highlights current "hot debates," which are then presented in an editable format that allows readers to make changes to the interactive articles directly online. Ultimately, this leads to a series of white papers, K-16 curricula, and other documents as well as, ideally, inspiring new projects.

Mathsoft is a company offering consulting services and products to "help organizations create manageable engineering information." The Mathsoft Resources section includes an "eclectic" collection of unsolved mathematics problems and a series of Math Constants Essays. The essays reflect the organization's fascination with the appearance of certain constants, which "echo throughout mathematics, in seemingly independent ways." The site discusses how these constants from various subdisciplines of mathematics characterize the structure of mathematics, "just as physical constants provide 'boundary conditions' for the physical universe." They also offer a selection of links to websites with statistics, engineering and math resources.

The Robotics and State Estimation Lab at the University of Washington is "interested in the development of embedded computing systems that interact autonomously with their environment in an intelligent way." The lab investigates probabilistic methods and their application to mobile robotics in order to "develop rich yet efficient methods for representing uncertainty and for reasoning under uncertainty." They evaluate these methods through application in mobile robot localization, map building, exploration, and multi-robot collaboration. Their work includes an evaluation of the CentiBots Project (see MET Report, May 9, 2003), which is posted here. Visitors are invited to view several animations illustrating particle filters and their extensions used in the study of state estimation and learning in areas such as people tracking and high-level activity recognition. Descriptions and video footage provide a nice overview of the lab's projects, such as RoboCup, Ubiquitous computing, Mapping and Exploration, and Museum Tour-guide Robots. Publications, which include reports, articles, book chapters, and workshop presentations, can be viewed and downloaded from the project pages or within the Publications section.

"20,000 Problems Under the Sea" is a website created jointly by MathPro Press and the University of Missouri-Rolla's Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics . This section of the website offers a selection of 80 "tantalizing math problems from all over the world." Visitors can "tour" the problems, which were submitted through various competitions worldwide, all of which are listed in the Sources section from the main page of the website. Going "undersea" leads you their main page, where a search form lets you search within a database of 20,000 math problems. Other sections highlight mathematics problem books published by MathPro Press and a history of the project.

Computational molecular biology, which now is commonly called bioinformatics, draws on mathematics and computer science to inform research in biology. This evolving area of research advances our knowledge of biological systems and contributes to medical research, but also raises ethical issues and demands increased collaboration among scientists. These issues are reviewed in this issue of Topic in Depth.

The first website (Biocomputing in a Nutshell) offers a broad introduction to bioinformatics. The second website (NRC: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists) provides a summary of a report from the National Research Council outlining some of the contributions of bioinformatics research and suggests ways to promote collaboration among the diverse disciplines within graduate and undergraduate programs. The author of this next website (What is Bioinformatics?) provides links to various definitions of bioinformatics and offers a brief review of the origins of the field. Another interesting facet of this work, which can probably be traced to the field's history, is the sharing of tools and resources over the Internet. For example, researchers can share their open source code software on websites such as this one from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (Open Bioinformatics Foundation) or search this directory from the University of British Columbia (University of British Columbia: Bioinformatics Links Directory) to find everything from the genome of the SARS virus to basic guidelines and tools. Some interesting research projects are described on this website from the European bioInformatics Institute (European BioInformatics Institute). Finally, a review of some of the ethical issues raised by this work are posted on this website (OneLook Reverse Dictionary)

Every science enthusiast will find countless, fascinating stories at this National Geographic website. The news site covers stories related to adventure and exploration, archaeology and paleontology, kids' news, science and technology, people and culture, the environment, and travel. Users can discover Special Series which cover emerging explorers, oceans, the pulse of the planet, and so much more. The incredible images warrant a visit all by themselves.

There are certainly times for everyone where they cannot seem to remember a certain phrase or word, and it may become rather vexing and frustrating. Fortunately, there is now the OneLook Reverse Dictionary website which can help persons confounded by this situation. Essentially, users can type in a concept into a search engine and receive a list of words and phrases related to that concept. For example, typing in "joy from the pain of others" returns over one hundred results, including "schadenfreude" and "regret". There are several other uses to the site, including the ability to explore related concepts or to answer basic identification questions. Perhaps the most important function of the Reverse Dictionary is that users (if they are so inclined) may also use the database to solve crossword puzzle clues.

An interactive site for information on development and poverty reduction, the Development Gateway portal provides a space for communities to share experiences on development efforts. The portal supports the Development Gateway Foundation’s objectives of increasing knowledge sharing, improving public sector transparency, enhance development effectiveness, and building local capacity to empower communities -- through services such as an online directory for information on development projects (AiDA), an electronic procurement market (dgMarket), information on major development topics (Topic Pages), and links to a growing network of country-level initiatives (Country Gateways).

Digital Mind Modeling Project by MindPixel invites Web users to contribute to the creation of the first statistical model of human thought. The Canadian scientist, Chris McKinstry, who founded the project "hopes to be able to teach a computer what it means to be human" by using an approach similar to seti@home "to extract the entire content of an average person's mind bit by literal bit from millions of different internet users." After about 10 years running, the final collection will be available for other artificial intelligence researchers. For now, visitors can register using an online form to access the Mindpixel News System, which offers the latest news pertaining to the mind and mind-related science. Internet users can also register and make their contribution to science by talking to the online system, which the author calls GAC, pronounced "Jack." Contributors earn voting rights "that will give them a say in every aspect of how the project is run, from data collection and use to the distribution of data and research funds.